


Galene

by Taciturn



Series: Goddesses [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, Slice of Life, idk how to tag this?, non-genre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taciturn/pseuds/Taciturn
Summary: Prompto Argentum lived on a borrowed name and made up time. It was the briefest meeting with water goddess that changed his life.





	Galene

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so bad at summaries. Apologies to those who are fans of the Sunshine Prince.

GALE′NE (Galênê), a personification of the calm sea, and perhaps identical with Galateia, one of the Nereides, is called by Hesiod (Theog. 244) a daughter of Nereus and Doris.

–

Prompto Argentum lived on a borrowed name and made up time. What he wished to belong to him was created for a purpose not his own. He hid this fact through a smile that was brighter than the sun and wider than the skies along with a laugh and louder than the storms. Prompto Argentum was made up of fragments and of broken promises.

As beautiful as the city was, the world beyond it seemed so dreamlike to him. What photos he could take of the jagged horizon were always too blurry, imperfect, idyllic,  _manufactured._  He wanted many things in life, trust, friendship, acceptance, but more than anything, he wanted sleep. Tucked into the corner of the city, a commoner dressed as a Crownsguard in training, he wished for space, a place to think to  _hear_ what thoughts could be his and his alone.

Loneliness was something he was familiar with. In a gated community filled with older folks who kept more to themselves than their neighbors, he found solace in capturing moments in time through his camera when his heart skipped a beat at the beauty that surrounded him. Through the click of a shutter and a shy glance up to make sure no one was watching, he hoarded images, hoping, praying that they would live for him. Life for him was perfectly serene, and he had warm memories of trying to take pictures of the void of stars at night above the water.

Prompto found himself walking a lot. Most of the time, it was in the dead of the night when it was quietest and his thoughts almost seemed to collect correctly. Strolling the streets, he learned the corners and the quaintness of his neighborhood as the critters of the night scampered off, eventually leading him to the beach. He never needed music to listen to when his feet lead him to the water. The sound of gently lapping waves accompanied the beating of his heart and provided the booming baseline to his footsteps being the only sounds that he needed to think, to breath, to  _believe_  that he was real.

He often counted stars during those long walks, thinking them as a reflection of the freckles on his face. Each constellation he matched fell from the heavens to kiss gently at his cheeks and take a little bit of the stress he felt away from him. As the waves caressed at the corners of his consciousness, he could almost believe he was once born, and not made to be human. As the tide fell when the moon retreated, so did the tension of  _being_  and all that was left was his ability to believe.

Fondly, most fondly of all, he remembered the first night to the beach. He sat on a rock that was still holding onto the last vestiges of warmth from the sun, staring out into the darkened waters as moonlight rippled and played across the surface. It was the first night he didn’t need his camera to capture the magic of the world around him. As tempting as the water seemed to be, the first nip of autumn air prevented him from dipping his toes into its inky depths. As brightly as he shone during the day, he could not let anyone know how weak he was to illness. That night, he recalls most fondly of throwing the windows to his room wide open so that he could continue to listen to the restless ocean just past his reach.

–

Six weeks of regularly walking at the beach and Prompto Argentum began to hallucinate.

_There’s no way she’s real._

Thursday night, just past 3 AM on a routine walk, the peaceful lull of waves was interrupted by the unfamiliar sound of splashing and a voice that shone brighter in the dark night than his smile in the sun. Someone, laughed and sang during his hours of the dead when he was sure no one was awake.

Down by the pier she danced in the dark, glassy waters of the night, laughing and squealing at the fish that darted and danced by her legs. She sang loudly, off key and off tune to songs from at least three decades ago. The way she moved smelled strongly of chrysanthemums and orange blossoms in the summer. Despite the chill of autumn setting in, she flailed and swam in the darkened water as if it was the middle of summer.

Under a waxing moon which nestled between Castor and Pollux, Prompto Argentum met a goddess who was drenched in the light of the stars while moonbeams dripped heavily from her eyelids.

She didn’t notice him until he was only about thirty paces from the end of the pier.

“Oh, hello! I didn’t think people were up this late! What’s up? Couldn’t sleep?” Her first interaction reminded him of a wide-eyed curious child, naive to the world.

“I usually take a walk down by here to help me go to sleep” He replied, skeptical, and sure he was still strongly imagining everything.

“No, no. There has  _got_ to be a better reason why someone like  _you_  would be up this late, walking around here like you’ve never seen water before.” She disappeared underneath the dark surface of the water and Prompto felt himself sigh in relief, realizing the moment was over. When she appeared again, at the edge of the pier, arms crossed on the wooden planks, hair swirling around her face in a tangled mess, he felt his heart stop. “Come on now, there’s  _got_  to be a story behind all of this.”

“There really isn’t a story to any of this. It’s just… nice and quiet here.” He shrugged before coming to his senses that  _yes,_  there was someone there and  _yes,_  they were speaking to him. He couldn’t help but wish that his camera was with him to catch the way the moonlight made her hair looked curled and wild.

“Quiet is the only good thing about this place, really.” She scoffed.

“Well, I mean, it’s better than during the day when it’s all noisy.”

“I guess you have a point there.” She sighed and shifted her weight a bit, making the planks of wood groan slightly. “There’s literally nothing to  _do_  here though. All the people are old and no one ever swims in the water during the day. I mean have you  _seen_  how much trash there is?”

“Wait, then why are you in the water now?”

“Because I want to be. But that’s beside the point. You never  _really_  answered my question. Why are you here? There’s no way a pretty thing like you grew up here. All the old grannies would be spoiling you rotten to the core. Did you move here recently?”

“I… I grew up here. I just, don’t really go out much. But I just started coming to the beach recently. How did you figure?”

Maybe it was just the way the water lapped at her waist as she clung to the edge of the pier that made her seem like a sprite straight out of a fairy tale. Or perhaps it was the moonlight casting a glowing halo around that made her seem absolutely surreal and ethereal to him. Still, a deeply skeptical part of him truly wanted to believe he was imagining this whole scenario.

“Well, first, there  _are_  no younger people here. I’m just visiting my folks for a little bit. Been away for a while. I’m an ornithologist y'know. Most of my studies are on chocobos, but I  _really_  like to run around finding the big ones, like ruhks! So, my reasearch takes me all over the place.” She let out a dreamy sigh and settled her head back down on her arms. “It’s nice though, coming back for a bit and taking a dip every now and then. Secondly, if you need to take a walk around here to lull you to sleep from the city sounds, you must be one hell of a light sleeper, kid.”

“I’m not a kid! I have a name. It’s Prompto. And you’d best remember it. I’m training to be a Crownsguard.” Prompto huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Look, it’s just, nice to walk around here at night. It’s like you, coming back to your parents’ place.”

As much as he tried not to show it, he felt a twinge of envy that she even had a place with parents to come back to. What with how often he saw his own folks, it was difficult to swallow the bitter feeling that was rising from the back of his throat. She, as carefree as the world, had the one thing that he wanted.

“No, no.” She countered, shaking him out of the foul mood that was sinking through his skin. “You see, those are two different things. I’m coming back here because I have a familial obligation and it’s a free room for a few days before I have to head out again. You, on the other hand willingly bring yourself to walk around in the dead of the night so you could experience ‘peace and quiet.’ Prompto. You may be a Crownsguard in training, but man, you’re weird. Have you ever heard of earplugs? They work  _miracles_  on loud noises, and you’ll get a lot more sleep that way 'cause y'know, you’re not up and about in the dead of the night.”

Any chance Prompto had to reply was cut short as she floated off to play with more invisible fish in the impossibly dark water. Prompto didn’t really have much of an answer to her question. He could have easily found the quiet he wanted in other ways, but he chose to seek the water as if it was the only place that mattered to him. Perhaps it was that magnetic draw to it that eventually brought him to her.

How sorely he wished he had his camera to catch the stars as they flickered in the night sky while she laughed and sang songs he had only briefly heard in snippets while browsing radio stations.

The rest of the night, he sat at the edge of the pier, feet numb and dipped into the water, watching as she swam around, laughing and talking to her fishy friends. The part of him which thought it was all an illusion at first became the part of him that yearned for her to talk to him and not her silent, swimming friends.

By the time the night waned and Prompto got himself to bed, he refused to open his windows. The sound of waves that night were too loud with the sound of free will and singing fish.

~~

In the morning, at his front doorstep. His shoes and a bright pink sticky note with a message scrawled on it:

_Goofball, you left your shoes at the end of the pier. At least the grannies here were nice enough to point me in the direction of your place. You’re lucky I’m not your shoe size because I would have made these mine if I could._

The place her name should have been was smudged and illegible. His shoes had been spitefully filled with sand and he couldn’t help but laugh at her petty nature.  _Six, I should have asked for her name…_

The rest of his day, the whole scenario of their conversation haunted him. The scrap of paper with her written note burned in his pocket and he found himself constantly fidgeting with it. He found himself forgetting most of what he was supposed to be training for and ending up with more bruises that day than he cared to talk about. Not that there were a lot of people he could talk to about them in the first place.

By the end of his scheduled day, out of sheer frustration and impulse, the weightless note became an unbearable burden to him and he threw it in the garbage.

He destroyed the one and only memento he had from a conversation with a water goddess. Though the object itself was temporal, the memory of her moon drenched figure lived forever in Prompto’s mind. And he would chase that image forever move with his camera in hand.

Prompto Argentum lived on borrowed time and makeshift memories. However, he’d now count the pictures he’s taken and they would more than make up for the lost time that wasn’t his.


End file.
